Reason.tv: ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons—A conversation with author James Delingpole

James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it's green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the "watermelons" of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

Approximately 10 minutes.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

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72 responses to “Reason.tv: ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons—A conversation with author James Delingpole”

the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement [those who claim to be environmental, but aren’t because they are really pushing a socialist agenda] do not want to save the world. They want to rule it. [institute a socialist agenda]

All liars tell falsehoods. Mean people suck. Tautologies are tautological, by definition.

Yes – the degree of resources you can pilfer. It is not the same to rule the world if your serfs happen to be just a bunch of peasants… But if they happen to have a lot of dough – why, Paradise is just around the corner!

Well, NM, I have no doubt that there are plenty of watermelons who are more or less sincere about their environmentalism.

Its just a happy coincidence that their preferred solutions to their perceived problems happen to be what they wanted all along: centralized/authoritarian government.

In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised of many movement environmentalists started out as committed central controllers, and found movement environmentalism a congenial home, perhaps because of its anti-business rhetoric.

Its just a happy coincidence that their preferred solutions to their perceived problems happen to be what they wanted all along: centralized/authoritarian government.

Hmm..

Not really. The science says that the solution to the commons problem is individual property rights. This is the apolitical solution. To come up with the actual problem of government imposed commons and say it is the solution is more then a coincidence. At most you can say some may be useful idiots…but that is about how far the charity can go.

One of my favorite examples in this line was when the Soviets tried to reverse the flow of the Volga river or Penn and Teller’s example of green protesters who signed a petition against dihydrogen oxide, not knowing that it was really just H20.

What saves the air from automotive C02? Decades of court battles, regulations, and bailouts for General Motors and other union-constipated dinosaurs? Or consumers simply preferring the aesthetic of cars that are at once cool, well-designed, convenient, affordable, and fuel-efficient?

What finally motivated car manufacturers to come out with low-emission vehicles in the first place? Heavy-handed government edicts, or consumers looking to save money on gas?

What saves us from Frankenfood, factory farming, downer cows, and eeeeviiill fast-food companies? Is it government regulation, sin taxes on potato chips and soda, and forcing farmers to go free-range organic? No, it’s the market choosing to shop elsewhere and eat better-quality foods. Walmart added organic produce, FFS. This didn’t happen because Michelle Obama screamed for it; it happened because the market told Walmart what they wanted to buy, and Walmart listened.

The local Lowe’s or Home Depot is filled with recycled glass tiles, low-flo toilets, citrus or enzyme-based household cleaners, zero-off-gassing carpets and cabinetry, and fumeless house paint because consumers — not government jackboots — demanded this stuff.

There are plenty of environmentalists out there who aren’t watermelons, and I’m one of them. It’s because we’re smart enough to figure out that the market chooses progress. 100% of the time.

So when farmers in Africa are suddenly seeing draughts and the like destroying the economic well-being because there is more CO2 and there are more temperature spikes and changing wind patterns, how are they going to get Delingpole to pay for it?

“It’s because we’re smart enough to figure out that the market chooses progress. 100% of the time.”

Corporations, companies and businesses don’t do anything voluntarily.

See, if it was us Westerners that got harmed by CO2 output, we and the industries would cut outpute *very quickly*. But it’s most ly brown people far, far away that will suffer first, so why would we do anything?

Do you think we would demand efficient wares and cars from our Galtian overlords if we had gas subsidized by people in a different country? Fuck no.

We are already getting away with not paying the marginal social cost caused by the externality that is CO2. We are already skirting market logic. Not to mention accepting subsidies from our governments.

“Its just a happy coincidence that their preferred solutions to their perceived problems happen to be what they wanted all along: centralized/authoritarian government.”

Why would anyone voluntarily pay more for ouputting CO2 just to cover the marginal social cost?

Why would anyone pay a private or public trash-removal company to deal with one’s trash if you can’t be punished for just tossing it out and letting people far, far away deal with the ensuing problems (how you people in African and Bangladesh doing? Well, here’s some more draughts and hurricanes! you’re welcome! Best regards – the US and Europe)?

The problem is that we can pollute a lot without suffering – because we will be the last to be affected – while people who are not responsible for CO2 levels are already suffering.

In other words, you want to pollute for free, and get subsidized by your government. If your government were to act in accordance with economic sustainability as well as libertarian principles of not letting other pay the bill for your externalities, then you would be paying more for energy and fuel than you are.

In other words, only governments can enforce the most libertarian response to the CO2 externality problem. It’s no *one’s* problem but *everyone’s* problem.

I’d like to hear another solution. Oh, and call me a socialist if you want to. Since post-agricultural humans are socialist and statist by default, it will be a refreshing affirmation of my humanity in contrast to the dehumanizing and degenerative bleating I usually get from libertarians.

At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one.

Which explains why the Greenland ice mass was reported as being 15% less of what it really is, why a student’s term paper is used as “evidence” of Global Warming, why statistically flawed models are used instead of actual observations, why the bandwagon is full of statists (holy coincidence, Batman!)

Old mexican, show me any climate scientist that has not denounced the 15% claim. it is ludicrous and they have been pilloried by scientists for using that figure. No need for student term papers used as evidence. there is plenty of published peer reviewed literature in every discipline, and plenty of direct observations are evidence of increased global temps and the consequences. this ideological chimera of “statists” is so exaggerated as to be almost useless.

Recycling is for chumps. I just throw everything into the regular black trash can. The blue one is inside used for laundry, and the green one (with it’s nice hinged lid) makes a great receptacle for cleaning up dog shit from the backyard.

I’ll even pick up liter and throw ‘recyclables’ indiscriminately into the general trash.

Didn’t you get the memo? They want everyone to live in a tiny box in super-dense cities to keep the wilderness pristine. You’ll be forced to ride a bike to work at your non-profit and eat organic vegetables for lunch.

Want less carbon being produced to power our homes and businesses? Go nuke and lower the cost of power to half what it is now. Yeah, a few thousand lives may be lost some place, but if AGW is really all what everyone says that’s really a tiny percentage to avoid world destruction, right?

seful information, many thanks to the author. It is puzzling to me now, but in general, the usefulness and importance is overwhelming. much thanks again and good luck! welcome to visit us ,if you are interested in winter sports .jakke salg

I am going to make two post. One before Listening to the interview and one after. I will make assumptions based on Delingpoles past work, and then see how valid my analysis is. First off he will present no actual evidence to support his hypothesis that does not rule out other much more reasonable ones. There will be no information based on actual science that is not either distorted, just plain wrong, or cherry picked. he will make logical connections that seem reasonable , but that again either are based on individual instances extrapolated to a generalization with absolutely no support, or that are exaggerations that will fit the emotional desires of those that want to believe him. I could make more predictions but let’s see how i do just with this.

Well, you lose. Delingpole accurately reported that while CO2 has steadily increased, global temperatures have not. Instead they have fallen and risen, and then trended flat since 1998.. ERGO, CO2 cannot be “the” cause for warming. QED. And of course the earth has been warming for the past 12,000 years…

I see you replied to me up here. I have posted part of my specific analysis of this interview farther below. Quickly just to address the one point you bring up here. You are correct that CO2 has increased for the last hundred years, though I would not use the word steadily. The rate has fluctuated over that period. for the last 50 years it has certainly accelerated with periodic dips in increase due to economic downturns. However climate scientists have not contended that global temps would increase with a linear correlation. There are many factors that impact global temperature. volcanic activity. and anthropocentric aerosols, numerous ocean/weather patterns, and just the huge ocean heat sink. Even so the average temperature since 1998 is significantly higher than the period before it. I wonder if you could supply any skeptic scientist who claims that CO2 can not be the cause for warming? Also your claim that the earth has been warming for 12,000 is easily shown to be false. All you need to do is check any scientific source of temps for the holocene, and there have been many ups and downs, but until about 2-3000 bc it was generally warmer than recent times until of course the extreme increase over the last 30 years. If you need further clarification, I am happy to discuss more.

This is what passes for Reason around here? What a joke, climate change is all about science. The efforts to fool the public into continuing our present course are political however. Big money backers make for lots of smokescreens, and rags like yours make willing stooges to press thier lies forward.

Hey, I want some of what you are smoking. The truth of “climate change” is all about the LACK of science.

A scientist is someone who follows the Scientific Method. That requires allowing independent verification of one’s work by making the raw data, computer codes, algorithms, etc., available to anyone who wants to know if the claims made are accurate. “Climate scientists” keep their data and methods secret as POLICY – they are not scientists.

Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit for years – even before Climategate – exposed this policy by the leading lights of the CAGW movement: Michael Mann and the Hockey Team, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Lonnie Thompson, and all the core IPCC “lead authors”.

The reason for the policy of secret data and methods has become clear when they are discovered (like Mann’s “CENSORED” ftp directory) or forced out (like Briffa’s Yamal data by a Royal Society publication) – the raw data is cherry picked, then massaged with phony statistical methods, or just literally turned upside down. Phrases like ‘short-centered PCA’, ‘Yamal’, and ‘Upside Down Tijlander’ are infamous among those who have dared take an honest look behind the “climate science” curtain.

“The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science” by Andrew Montford documents in clear detail how “climate scientists” have perverted themselves and their profession.

Regretfully, I came to the same conclusion by tracing events in the space science program back to: a.) The 1967 Bilderberg dogma of the Sun as a stable H-fusion reactor in equilibrium; b.) Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China in 1971; and c.) The dismantling of the Apollo program that was announced on 5 Jan 1972.

I once was a liberal. I was young, immature, and basically stupid to the problems our nation was having at the time. I had no real solutions to the problems, but I marched anyway. It was the popular thing to do. And there were girls, girls, and more girls, so I kept thinking with the wrong head. Then one day, I met my wife to be, got serious, and later on got married, had children, and woke up one morning determined to solve the problems at my job, and for that matter the whole world was going to be my next project. Got politically involved, remembered my history, civics, math and science. Then I began to study my government, and came to a quick conclusion, this isn’t right. The president is wrong, and he knows it. Congress is wrong and they know it. These moderate republicans and liberal democrats are wrong! And I had been wrong!

Looking back at my liberal years, I see myself for what I really was. Self serving, always taking something from someone that wasn’t mine, telling others what they should be doing, and how they should be living their lives, borrowing things I never intended to give back, making others pay for things I wanted, simply because I was me, and felt they should feel privileged just to be in my company. I realize now that I was the lowest form of human life. I felt no one was as smart as me, so they needed me to run their lives. No morals, no values, just no quality at all about me.

In conclusion, most of the people who are environmentalist are liberal, doing as I had done in my youth. Many of them don’t know what .02% represents, and there is no need to debate with fools, who are to immature to even hold a steady job. We hope they have an awakening someday, and realize how wrong they have been. Though I have seen some of the old friends who simply never grew up.

I rememebr people like you. People who were liberals so that they would fit in, or so that they could get the girls or for any number of reasons that did not include actually thinking through their beliefs and subjecting them to other viewpoints and adjusting them when other people made arguments you hadn’t thought of. Yes. those people tend to throw it away becuase they never understodd it to begin with, and then the realities of life allow them to integrate an idealogy that is rather simplistic and insulates one from thinking one ones own. You guys were almost as bad as the rigid ideologue leftists, who could only accept the current set of beliefs and would not change them unless there was some internal crises that forced them to shift to another rigid set of beliefs. Of course it is because of them that there are people like you, which is why they are worse! Funny how I have so many beliefs that resopnate with libertarian ideals yet right wing ideology has so infiltrated much libertarian thinking (except for drugs and sex and some of the stupider right wing shiboleths like Cuba). this crazy belief that all market solutions are immediately better than any other kind, when in the real world we have organizations, some “government” some “corporate” that each have their positives and negatives, and both are subject to important bureaucratic regulating systems. it is quite sad really.

Well, I did it . i watched the whole thing. iw as going to give up at about 4 minutes, but I am glad that I didn’t. Yes. I did nail it. Not exaclty of course,. he did not say much of what I expected, especially from reading the comments, but he definitely did about every thing I said he would. One thing I DO agree with him about is the “no pressure video” it was a ridiculously stupid thing to do, and as he admits was roundly criticized by environmentalists and climate change scientists. And of course there are some that supported it. But then the very last thing is his comparing Erlich, Carson and others to communists because they think over population and resource scarcity are “bad things”. His ludicrous correlation between Soviet post stalinist communism and western liberals and environmentalists, will of course be eaten up by some libertarians, but the reality is nothing like that, and people who believe in “reason” ought to be aware enough and not blinded by ideology to the point that they can’t see much more realistic explanations. Delingpoles’ beautiful Utopian ending about how increased population and productivity is what will allow us to make the planet all purty again, is the height of pollyannism. If anybody really wants a point by point explanation of why almost everything he says is on a spectrum from pure garbage to mild exaggeration, I will be happy to oblige.

Too bad you didn’t acknowledge that Carson’s utterly wrong-headed insistence that DDT was harming birds and other wildlife has doomed millions to suffering and dying from malaria. Too bad you didn’t acknowledge that Erlich’s predictions about environmental and societal collapse, as well as world-wide famine, due to “The Population Explosion” have been utterly falsified. As for your point-by-point explanation…have at it. In ordinary discussion of such matters, that’s where you are supposed to start — NOT with strings of snotty unsupported assertions.

thank you. I never said that either Carson or Ehrlich were right about anything,. What I said is the correlation between them and Stalinism is ludicrous. If you can point me to some evidence where either of them knew their assertions were false and promulgated them solely for some nefarious statist purpose designed to kill or enslave millions of people, I am willing to consider their connection to Stalinism. In ordinary discussion one actually addresses what the person with who you are discussing actually writes about. And I am glad that we agree that Delingpole should not make strings of snotty unsupported assertions. Until I read that, I assumed that it would be worthless to engage you.

OK. Let’s start from the beginning. the first substantive thing he says is “climategate was a ….leak…” that has not been determined. It was very possibly a hack and there is circumstantial evidence to support that. There is NO objective evidence to support that it was a leak. It is just ideology that wants to believe that. It feels emotionally better to believe that some innocent techie sees this great fraud being perpetrated and risks his career to let the world know what evil is being hatched by these villains. It IS possible, but Delingpole does not bother to acknowledge the other possibility. then Reason posts a few of the emails and Delingpole says “these guys were torturing the evidence until it screamed/ They were suppressing the views of scientists with dissenting voices. They were generally behaving like very very bad boys…. How can we trust these guys when we see what they got up to in these emails…. Previously there was not so much evidence that they were doing it deliberately. this caught them red handed… the scam is over. they won’t dare have the chutzspah to carry on trying to cheat us in this way. What happened, there were 3 or four official (finger quotes) inquiries (big knowing smile). independent (finger quote)inquiries into climate gate. and guess what (more big knowing smiles). they found the climate gate scientists innocent of any kind of wrong doing. Nothing to see here, Move along. that was the message we got from those ..uh.. investigations.” This is actually the entire spectrum from utter garbage to mild exaggeration. First off, the investigations DID expose wrongdoing, both legal and ethical. Charges were not filed regarding freedom of information act wrongdoing, because it was not considered serious enough to warrant, but NOT because it was completely innocent. the principles involved have acknowledged both wrong doing in regard to FOI to some degree, but especially in regard to some aspects of scientific ethics. So delingpole just flat out lied here. Not a biggie but a lie nonetheless. What delingpole is really talking about is the five (not three or four) investigations that cleared ALL the climate scientists of any sort of fraud regarding research on climate change or any sort of premeditated manipulation of data in ways that were unscientific. The were cleared of destroying data, cleared of any kind of fraud, such as is implied in the email regarding the “hide the decline trick.” Delingpole makes absolutely NO SUBSTANTIVE specifics regarding any of the science that was controversial from the climate gate incident. it is just empty innuendo. 2:30 minutes of empty accusation. Nothing to justify “tortured evidence until it screamed”. Just, as you put it so well, “snotty unsupported assertions” One more then I have to go to bed, but I will be happy to continue later if you need more clarification about the worthlessness and pure propaganda that is this interview. “according to the theory as CO2 levels… rise dramatically, so global temperatures will rise with it. But actually they haven’t been. There has been no global warming since 1998. Well, CO2 hasn’t stopped rising, so It must be slightly more complicated than these doom mongers are saying.” So this is again the entire spectrum from garbage to mild exaggeration. EVERY single climate scientists agrees that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere affects global temperature. In that sense the science IS settled. Even the skeptics, Lindzen, Christie, Spencer and Michaels do not argue the physics. What they DO argue are the sensitivity and the the factors that might mitigate the effect by other as yet unknown effects through various scientifically possible hypothesis. Delingpole totally ignores this consensus. He then says the temp has not increased since 1998. this is either an outright lie or a mangling of use of statistics. it is true that 1998 is the highest global temp recorded from satellites (2005 and 2010 are about the same). But it was an EXTREME spike up from all the previous years, and the decade since then is significantly hotter than the decade before, with all the highest temp years coming since 1998, if one looks at the entire planet. Saying temps have not increased is like saying Michael Jordan’s scoring has not increased after one 90 point game. If he was averaging 25 points before that game and 60 points after that game, you would be technically correct but everyone who knew anything about basketball would laugh at you for making such a stupid statement. “so It must be slightly more complicated than these doom mongers are saying.” Here he attributes a frame of mind that is totally non existent. If you have read ANY papers or more than just newspaper headlines from scientists, they ALL say it is VERY complicated. that is WHY they use models. NO scientist says they understand every aspect of climate that influences temperature, especially on the short term (less than 10-20 years) and especially regionally. It is people like Delingpole that ignore the myriad factors and latch onto anything they can that they construe to show there is little or no CO2 induced global climate change. Scientists are quite familiar with the various ocean and weather and sun cycles that impact short term and regional temp. But just as a scientist can’t predict if there will be more or less snow or higher or lower temps for any particular period, they can make predictions based on long term trends from what IS known of the margin of error around all these factors. So while i can’t predict how big a particular wave is on any beach at any particular time. I CAN tell you that during a hurricane most of the waves will be MUCH larger than when there is little wind. more later if you wish.

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